


Legends Are Not Born In A Warm Summer's Glow

by DinosaurTheology



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: Angst, Battle, Courage, Duelling, Heavy Angst, Honor, Nobility, Plague, Pride, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-08 00:05:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11634771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: Queen Ione would have been happy to live out her life as Ione the Unremarkable, but war is always an interesting time and courage is doing what you must even when your blood has turned to ice water. We must not be daunted.





	1. Let Us Make An Ending

**Author's Note:**

> So, Battle For Mewni was great and opened up a lot of questions. I decided that I HAD to find out what happened, exactly, to Moon's mother and... it took me to a couple of pretty raw places. So I decided to take you to them with me cause I love you all so much :P

Ione, Queen of Mewni, lead a quiet life. She reigned over the people with fairness and they spent their live in relative tranquility. No queen is perfect, mind, nor subjects. The rich grew richer, under her rule, but the poor grew likewise poorer. No great invasion of monsters took place, but once and a while a party of raiders would still creep down from the hills to steal precious corn and strike fear into the hearts of those living in the borderlands. The Lucitors of the Underworld and Ponyheads of the Cloud Kingdom remained staunch allies, but even the most beloved and stoutest friends can turn a cold shoulder when trade agreements and matters of money come into play.

She married young, as Mewman queens are expected to, and bore a healthy daughter. The child was beautiful with huge, lavender eyes that reminded Ione of her own grandmother, the famously shy Queen Celena, and so she named the baby Moon in honor of that monarch. Moon proved an admirable daughter, if not one particularly easy to love from time to time. She studied hard, learned magical theory with no trouble and grew into an artlessly elegant young woman. So what if she could appear as the tiniest bit cold or aloof, from time to time? This was the role of a queen, after all, to be apart from, in one way or another, or simply different from the people she ruled. 

Ione brought the matter to Glossaryk's attention, once. He smiled in his enigmatic way and said, “What's worrying you, Ione? Is it that Moon seems distant from the good people of Mewni or that she's distant from you?”

Ione winced. “You have a way of cutting directly to the matter's heart, Sir Glossaryk of Terms. I yield to your wisdom in that matter. And yet I wonder...”

“Wonder what, my queen?”

“I wonder if the occasional coldness she shows me might also affect her when she does rule? The people must believe that their queen cares for them, that she will look out for them.”

“May I beg to differ with you, Your Majesty?”

Ione chuckled. “I do not see where my allowing or disallowing it will make any difference as to whether you do or not, Glossaryk.”

He smiled. “Very well put. In that matter, then, understand that it is important for the people of Mewni to respect their queen. To be loved, as you are or as Celena or Festivia were, is a good thing but a queen can be beloved and disobeyed.”

“You make it sound so... clinical, Glossaryk. As if my daughter were going to be a monster to be feared.”

“Not feared, Your Majesty, respected. There's a crucial difference. Solaria the Monster Carver, ferocious as she was, had the respect of the people. Eclipsa had their fear.”

Ione shuddered. “She did indeed.” She drew a long, deep breath and thought carefully. “And Moon, Glossaryk... is she respected?”

“She's only twelve, Your Majesty. There's precious little to respect, yet.”

“Glossaryk...”

He tugged his beared. “I see depths in her eyes that I have not since I taught Eclipsa and she catches on to all theories mundane and magical with a felicity I have not seen since then. Yes, Ione, I believe that she will be respected.”

“Good,” she said. “I am satisfied to have raised a daughter to be... respected. Even if she is not necessarily loved.” It was a weird way to look at the world. Ione was well loved indeed by the people of Mewni. Should she not want the same for her own daughter? Apparently not, according to Glossaryk, and he knew best, after all... or at least always maintained that he did.

Ione's husband, a Melick of the Phule clan, died in the Great Plague in the year that Moon turned thirteen. Ione mourned him, as did her daughter, but there was nothing that either of them could have done. Neither was a healer, like Aeschyla or Hippocrita, after all, and though she'd sat beside Eliphas' bedside to mop his brow while the life leaked out of him in sweat and snot... 

It was fruitless to dwell on this, as fruitless as becoming consumed by the thousands of Mewmans that died in that dark spring alongside their king. The people grew restless as resources grew scarce—corn could hardly harvest itself, after all, and it was the golden lifeblood of the Mewman people. Violence flared more than once and it took all of Ione's gentle worlds, along with Mina Loveberry's hard fists and whipping hair, to quell the murmurs of rebellion that grew in murky corners.

Yes, Ione's reign—and life—had been and should have remained peaceful. She'd have been happy to be added to the wall of royal tapestries as “Ione the Unremarkable.” Let others make history, she thought, those like Hekate the Witch Queen or Dreama the Poet. She was happy enough to live as quietly as a queen could and die the same way after passing the wand and her throne to the queer, stoic girl who'd succeed her. 

There is something often said of the best laid plans of rats and corn, however, and Ione had not consulted with the Lizard Folk of Tanglewood Bog before making hers. They roared out to war in the summer of Moon's fourteenth year. Confusion reigned, at their first attacks, then sheer, naked terror. 

The survivors who trudged into the capital, few as they proved, told tales of unimaginable cruelty and depravity. Corns fields and towns ablaze in the night, men and women cut down while they begged for their lives, Mewan children roasted on spits or eaten raw and wriggling. The monsters were terrible, had always been, but usually proved easy to predict. The Bufanoid clans of Rulon Mire fought fiercely but behaved with a queer sort of monstrous honor that even Mina, who hated monsters more than she loved life itself, could bring herself the respect. Brudo's Kappa were sly and untrustworthy but mostly kept to their forest eyries and would not harass those who did not encroach on their territory. Matters could proceed apace with those circumstances. They were understandable circumstances.

These Lizard Folk, on the other hand? Their behavior, everything short of a full scale invasion of Mewni the likes of which had not been seen since the days of Queen Festivia, could neither be ignored nor, it seemed, reasoned with. This is why Ione had ridden out by herself, on a lone warnicorn, to corner and slay the warlord that they'd rallied around on this brutal grande tour through her kingdom. It made sense, she thought. Once may slip through unnoticed where an army would meet resistance. To fight him one on one, in an honorable duel, could save so many Mewman lives. It was the sensible thing to do, she told herself, the right thing to do.

Why, then, she thought, does doing it make my teeth clench and my bowels run with ice water?  
Ione met the Lizard Folks' commander on the site of a village he'd burned. He sat on a tangled pile of burned bodies, honing and oiling a dark, suicidally sharp longsword. His looks might have been handsome in a man. The skin, although grey and leathery, appeared clean and his limbs were long and muscular. The skulls of two Mewman royals, torn from defiled graves, adorned his epaulets. She dismounted the warnicorn. “So,” she said. “We meet at last.”

“We do.” His voice seemed too smooth, almost soothing. 

“I am surprised that you came, especially alone.”

“Why?” he said. “Because you couldn't imagine a filthy, lying monster would have anything like honor?”

“No,” she said, “not a monster. I would not have expected any less from a Bufanoid, nor a Beard Deer, but you and yours have proven yourself foul in word and deed.”

“My men have been...” He struggled for a word. “I admit that they've been a little over enthusiastic, from time to time.”

“That is a way to say it, yes,” she said. “I suppose we have to fight, now.”

He grimaced. “Is that what you want?”

“It's what has to happen, isn't it?”

“I truly do not want to kill you, Ione Butterfly.”

“At least not yet, you mean?”

“Not at all,” he said. “I want what is mine, what belongs to my people. We lived in the headlands outside Tanglewood Bog, once, and all we want is to live there in peace again.”

“Those are Mewman lands,” she said, “and have been for six hundred years.”

“There's no way to make you see reason, is there?” he asked. “No way to make you see my side of things?”

“I do see your side of things,” she said, “I really do. And yet the problem remains. The lands are Mewman and have been since time immemorial. The only thing you can do is to take your Lizard Folk and return to Tanglewood Bog. I won't even ask for you to make restitution for your crimes, if you do.”

“Jheregon.”

“Excuse me?”

“My people—the ones you call Lizard Folk. Our name for ourselves is Jheregon.”

“I see,” she said. “Then take your Jheregon and begone to Tanglewood Bog.”

“Thank you,” he said.

She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

“I cannot do as you ask, Queen Ione of Mewni,” he said, “and so we are going to have to fight, and I am most certainly going to kill you. It will be painful but I promise, in return for what you just did for me, it will be fast and as merciful as I can make it.”

“Wh-what did I do for you?”

“You called my people as we call ourselves. You called us the Jheregon.”

“I see. You are welcome.” She nodded, drew her wand and fell into a fighting stance. “Let us begin.”

He stood and unlimbered his mighty sword. “No,” he said. “Let us make an ending.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kinda slightly gross, and not easy to write, but... I'm pretty proud of it. It has a "mythic" feel towards the end, I think.

Only a small party rode out in search of the queen. It wasn't to diminish her importance, her daughter said to herself, because Ione had cut a fine figure of a woman and ruler in silks and her glittering crown. She'd been able to soothe fiercest arguments with a single, gentle word. Although she might not be remembered as the raving beauty that Celena had been, nor a great scholar like the Queen of Hours, Ione was a queen that the Mewman people loved with the same soft ferocity with which she loved them.

Moon held herself erect on the back of her favored mount, a battle-goat named Chauncy. A stubborn vessel for a stubborn rider, her mother had mused on more than one occasion. Moon, aware only later of the irony of it all, had set her jaw and growled to Ione that she was not stubborn, at least not any more stubborn than necessary for a future Queen of Mewni. She'd chafed against the chuckled response, struggled to pull away from the delicate fingers that threatened to tangle in her silvery blonde hair.

Now? She prayed to the Almighty Goddess that had created corn that it would be neither the last time she felt those fingers nor heard that chuckle. Please, she begged. Let it not be so, let it be that she is wounded, perhaps, but not so badly that she cannot be healed in body and mind. Let is be that she has just taken a sojourn to dream up some new strategy for us to use against those vile Lizard Folk so that we can push them back into Tanglewood and be done with this late nightmare. Even in her prayers, Moon realized, she was not optimistic enough to believe that her mother had engaged the leader of the army harassing them and emerged victorious. Such frivolity was not in her nature.

Mina Loveberry, riding beside her on a blazing red warnicorn, turned eyes hooded by fatigue and stress towards her. “Are you ready for what we're going to see, here?”

“Y-yes,” Moon said. “I'm ready.”

“No,” she said. “I don't think you're hearing what I'm saying, Your Highness. Are you really, really ready for what we're about to see? Not, like, in theory, but... y'know. What we're about to see.”

She grimaced and swallowed the lump in her throat. “I'm ready.”  
Moon wondered, when they reached her mother's final resting place, whether it might have been wiser to keep her big, fat mouth shut. She wondered, also, about the wisdom of having come on this fool's errand in the first place. One thing was for certain. She had wanted, originally, to bring a banner of Mewni's finest knights, a company, a battalion. Moon would have stormed out in force and gladly ground the filthy snouts of the Lizard Folk into the muck in which they so gleefully wallowed.

She winced at what little remained of Ione the Gentle. Mina laid a hand on her shoulder. “Do you see what I mean, now, Your High—I mean, Your Majesty?”

Moon blinked away tears, struggled to keep her gorge from rising. “No, Mina. Not yet.”

“How can you not see, Your Majesty?”

“No,” she said. “I see. But don't... don't call me Your Majesty, not yet. Let me be just Moon a few minutes longer.”

“Why not, Your... er, Moon?”

“Because if you call me 'Your Majesty' it means that I am the Queen of Mewni and that this... thing... lying here is my mother. It means that she is well and truly dead.”

“I will call you by whatever name you need, my lady,” Mina said, “but niceties like that don't change some basic facts, even ones that hurt a whole hell of a lot.”

“I know,” she said. “I know. Just.. give me a few moments, no more.”

“You're strong, kid. You can take it.” She squeezed. Moon appreciated the gentle pressure on her shoulder. “I know you can.”

“I can take it,” Moon said. “A fine term for this.” She uttered a bitter caw of laughter. “I'm apt to take this to my grave with me.” Two women, linked in battle and sorrow, looked horror full in its torn visage.

Ione's body had been mauled nearly beyond recognition. The savagery with which this attack had been carried out would have astounded Moon had the nerve endings not been burned out of her. Half the queen's face had been slashed away by a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth with naught but a raw, crimson ruin left behind. A beautiful, hazel eye stared out, made it worse by way of contrast, looked down on how her torso had been pulled in twain to unspool an ungainly pile of guts on the muddy turf.

“You were right, Mina,” Moon said. “It was best for us to come alone. Others... others did not need to see the queen, this way.”

“We'll make this right,” she said. “I promise. I'm gonna find the lizard that did this, skin him and make a belt out of his filthy hide.”

“No.”

“Huh?”

“There will be no torture,” Moon said. “It's not our way.”

“Our way or not,” she said, “it damned sure looks like your mother was tortured... doesn't she at least deserve that little measure of payback?'

“No, Mina.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was not tortured, Mina. Look...” She gestured towards the... corpse. Might as well admit it, Moon thought, since all the wishful thinking she could muster wouldn't change an ounce of what happened. “Her injuries are awful but she sustained them in combat and instead of letting her linger...”

She sighed and struggled to swallow. “Instead of letting her linger the lizard that did this finished her with a clean blow to the throat. See how it is torn away?” Couching it in such clinical terms, like this was a deer after a hunt in the forest and not what was left of the woman who'd given her life, seemed to help. Well, not really, but... a comforting lie was still a comfort.

“Yeah, I see,” Mina said. “Like a freakin' animal.” She growled, deep in her throat. “I still say we make a belt out of him.”

“No, Mina,” Moon said. “We must not give up our identity as Mewmans, our decency and our honor. We must not be daunted.” Something cried on the air when she said it just as the late queen's blood cried out for vengeance in the dirt. “We must not be daunted.”

Legends are not born in summer's warm glow; legends are born in the deepest heart of hell.


End file.
